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Recent Speeches 

OF 

HonXhauncey M. Depew,LL.D. 



At the Twentieth Annual Dinner given by the Montauk 
Club, of Brooklyn, in celebration of Senator Depew's 
Seventy-Seventh Birthday, April 29, 1911. 

At the Annual Dinner of the University Club, Washington, 
D. O, February 27, 1911 

At the Dinner given to Senator Depew by the Republican 
Club of the City of New York, April 7, 1911. 

At the Dinner given to Ex-Presidents of the Union League 
Club of the City of New York, April 8, 1911. 

At the Dinner given by the Pilgrims Society of New York 
to Mr. John Hays Hammond, Special Ambassador to 
the Coronation of King George V, at Plaza Hotel, 
May 24, 1911. 

At a Masonic Celebration at the Manhattan Opera House, 
New York, April 13, 1911. 

At the Luncheon of the Society of Cincinnati and their 
guests from other State Societies, Metropolitan Club, 
New York, May 10, 1911. 

Article by Mr. Arthur Wallace Dunn, of Washington, D.C., 
on Mr. Depew's Retirement from the Senate. 




W-4JAAAA1U1 ill. 




*& Of 




SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
at the Twentieth Annual Dinner given by the 
Montauk Club of Brooklyn in Celebration of his 
Seventy-Seventh Birthday, on April 29, 1911. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen: It is very interesting 
that the twentieth successive dinner which you have given me 
on my birthday should coincide with this club coming of age. 
Twenty-one years of club life to those who have been members 
from the beginning is always full of charm. The club is the 
nearest association to the family possible without domestic ties. 
A man who has a sympathetic disposition and loves to mingle 
with his fellowmen upon a basis more intimate than is afforded 
in business will have among the living, and, in memory, those 
who have passed away, an invaluable asset of choicest friend- 
ships. In no place as in the club does human nature reveal 
itself at its best and at its worst. Members become natural 
with each other and their selfishness or their good fellowship 
increases with the years. 

I recall those who were present at that first birthday cele- 
bration, and each one of them since has had distinctive fea- 
tures. It has differed from all other affairs of the kind because 
of its publicity and its freedom of discussion. The influence 
of words uttered here or revelations made here have at times 
reached far beyond the limits of this city. But these celebra- 
tions have also had every characteristic of the family birthday 
when the recipient is made happy because all present rejoice 
in the anniversary, hope for its indefinite recurrence and each 
of them can feel and sing "He is a jolly good fellow, which 
nobody will deny." 

One of the most interesting of these anniversaries was 
given me the year I entered the Senate, and now we are here 
the year that I retire. Twelve years in that great deliberative 
body is wonderfully educational as well as enjoyable. It has 
often been called a club and said to be the best in the United 

Senator Depew's birthday is April 23rd, but, owing to local condi- 
tions, the celebration of the event this year was the 29th. 



States. In a sense, it is. Within its walls, except in debate 
upon political questions, there are no divisions of parties. 
Republicans and Democrats, Stand-patters and Progressives, 
mingle on the floor, in committee rooms, in the cloak room and 
the dining room, with a daily familiarity which speedily 
removes the rough edges from the most acidulous, irritable 
and irritating of Senators. In the course of years, with hardly 
an exception, they all become cordial friends, with the heartiest 
good wishes for long continuance in the Senate. There is a 
great difference in the jubilant expectations with which one 
enters upon a new field of work and the calm and reminiscent 
mood with which he returns to private life. The principal 
difference which I find now is that while I was in I was in 
receipt on the average of one hundred and fifty letters a day, 
one hundred of them wanting things, most of which it was 
impossible for me to procure, and the other fifty abusing me 
because I failed to land the writer in a diplomatic or a con- 
sular position, in a high place in the departments, or upon the 
permanent pension roll either as a beginner or with an increase. 
As an out, my mail dwindles to twenty letters a day, most of 
them giving advice. Some say, "You are seventy-seven years 
of age, remarkably well preserved, and yet you cannot hope 
to reach one hundred unless you quit dining and eating." 
Others say, "Chew until the last morsel has disappeared before 
you swallow." Others say, "You must stop drinking." Others 
prescribe the limits of exercise and the kinds of health foods. 
Others tell me that the judgment of a man past seventy is 
never good as to investments, that radical legislation is to 
impair the income of railway securities, and, bad management, 
of industries, but that he has a mine to develop or a fertilizer 
to put upon the market and with a little money the returns 
will mean luxury for life. 

I was elected a Member of the Legislature in 1861. 191 1 
rounds out fifty years in intimate contact with public life or 
in the public service. The thought which most impresses itself 
upon me is that the functions of government, the rights of the 
citizen, the influence of laws upon the people have entirely 
changed during that period ; I think, emphatically for the 
better. The iconoclast has been abroad and shattered the 



most cherished images of the Fathers. If one of the framers 
of the Constitution could be reincarnated and visit us today, 
he would find the same great instrument almost unchanged, still 
the fundamental law of the land, but he would discover that 
legislation forced by the growth of the country, the rapid 
development of its resources, the influences of steam and elec- 
tricity, had compelled the enactment of restrictive laws which 
he would regard as tyrannical restrictions upon individual 
liberty, and that those laws had been sustained as Constitutional 
by the interpretations of the Supreme Court. He would dis- 
cover that these interpretations had so treated the general 
principles of his Constitution as to make them applicable and 
serviceable for a progress so radical as to seem to him revolu- 
tionary. Jefferson pinned his faith on the individual. He 
emphatically declared, "That government is best which gov- 
erns least." His idea was to give the freest reign to individual 
initiative, effort and achievement. It was this which made 
him opposed to slavery and anxious for its abolition. The 
ideas of Jefferson controlled the legislation of the Republic 
down to the Civil War. The first break in the traditional 
sentiments and principles which had so long governed us was 
when the Supreme Court found warrant in the Constitution 
to raise armies to coerce sovereign States and compel them 
to remain within the Union; not only to raise armies, but to 
incur gigantic debts and expand the revenue in every pos- 
sible direction to establish the fact that the Union of the States 
is indestructible and eternal. 

After the Civil War and the elimination of slave labor, the 
United States entered upon a new industrial era. Railroads 
spanned the continent, and in doing so created farms, villages, 
cities and new States. There were in 1861 about thirty- 
five thousand miles of railway in the United States, 
and in 191 1 the mileage has increased to two hundred 
and thirty-six thousand, which is one-half the railway 
mileage of the world. The necessity of great aggregations 
of capital to construct these iron highways, to promote manu- 
factures, to develop the resources of the country and its 
mines, its forests and its fields, rapidly created corporations. 
The old Jefferson ideas gave to capital, whether possessed by 



an individual or a partnership or a corporation, the freest rein. 
The people were eager for the development of the national 
w ealth. Their imaginations were fired with the opportunities 
it gave to their children for success beyond the dreams of the 
present generation and for the permanent and healthful 
employment of everybody. After a while it was found that 
if the corporation was not regulated by law, and did not have 
upon it the restraining power of the government, and was 
not compelled to have its operations exposed to the light of 
publicity, that the public, the corporations and their investors 
were subject to great evils and perils. Then began legislation 
upon the collective instead of the individual principle. The 
railroads, with the absolute freedom which was thought neces- 
sary for their primitive expansion, engaged in ruinous competi- 
tion with each other which impaired the efficiency of the 
service and the strength of the companies. Discriminations 
by rebates and other devices for favored cities, towns or 
individuals became common. Business dried up along the 
weaker lines under the original false idea that the proper way 
to secure justice from the railroad was to promote competition 
by law. Then rapidly came State and National commissions. 
Then came prohibitions against rebates, discriminations and 
favoritism, and then was developed what is nearly completed — 
that ideal of corporate management, the controlling power of 
the government to prevent abuses and also to protect the cor- 
porations in their rights, the expansion, extension, improve- 
ment and increasing efficiency of private ownership as against 
the waste and profligacy of ownership by the government. 
Now, here we have what might be called collective action 
reversing our time-honored rules and principles and yet work- 
ing beneficially for protecting without restricting enterprise 
and progress. To accomplish these results larger powers 
have been given to the Interstate Commerce Commission 
and a Court of Commerce created with adequate juris- 
diction. Soon it was found necessary that the old idea 
which had governed us for eighty years should be reversed 
as to all corporations. The legislation along this line reached 
so many in every settlement of the country that it raised a wild 
cry of alarm. It was shouted that private business was to be 



destroyed and fatal restrictions placed upon national develop- 
ment. The selfishness which to save expense made factories 
unsanitary and unsafe was practised as much by individuals 
as by corporations. The employment of children and the 
destruction of child life in order to make more money was 
found to be as much the vice of individuals as of corporations. 
So the law stepped in and swept away the whole theory of 
individualism and proceeded drastically to protect by law, by 
inspection and by government supervision the lives and the 
health of the people in the factories and to protect the chil- 
dren. We have not gone quite far enough. That frightful 
holocaust of the factory fire in New York a few days since 
shows that these laws must be more drastic, supervision more 
perfect and punishment more severe. 

These instances which I have cited, and they could be con- 
tinued almost indefinitely, demonstrate the complete change 
in our government in these fifty years of my public life, but no 
sane men will question that the change has been most beneficial 
and absolutely necessary. We as a people go to extremes. 
Having advanced thus far, our danger is that the unthinking 
may go on from protection to restrictions so severe as to 
endanger progress and enterprise. Corporate development 
during this period is not confined to the United States, but has 
been equally rapid in all countries. With the cable and cheap 
and rapid transportation over the seas the surplus savings of 
each country are at the service of all nations. The fluidity of 
capital makes Kings and Parliaments and Presidents and 
Congresses boards of directors of those huge competitive busi- 
ness organizations their several nations, upon whose success 
depends the living of their peoples and the extent to which 
prosperous conditions may ward off penury and starvation 
and promote prosperity. The great industrial nations, like 
Great Britain and Germany, encourage great combinations. 
They do it to increase the efficiency and cheapness of their 
productions, because their increasing populations and surplus 
threaten dangerous congestion and are a menace to the stability 
of their institutions and the peace and order of their com- 
munities. Their object is to capture for the sale of their sur- 
plus the markets of the world. They further help their own 



8 

industries by encouraging and creating a mercantile marine 
which will sail upon every sea and reach every port by sub- 
sidies sufficiently large and liberal to accomplish this result. 
The United States has taken an opposite course. We have 
persistently refused encouragement to the upbuilding of a 
mercantile marine. When Secretary of State Root made his 
famous visit to the South American Republics, he found in 
the crowded shipping of their ports but one vessel flying the 
American flag and our battleship fleet in its cruise around the 
world saw the ensign of their country only on their own masts. 
The thousands of steamers in the ports of these countries were 
English, German, French, Belgian, Italian, Austrian, Swedish 
and Norwegian, some carrying American products, but all 
agents for the manufacturers and business men of their 
own countries. The country became so alarmed at the 
rapidity with which industrial combinations were formed that 
the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was passed twenty years ago. 
It fairly expressed the idea of that period which was that the 
common law which had proved ample for the restraint of bad 
combinations for three hundred years was not sufficient to 
meet these new conditions, but that all industrial combinations, 
good or bad, should be prohibited and as far as possible we 
should become as a people retailers rather than wholesalers 
in the exploitation, perfecting and marketing of our products. 
Capital seeking opportunities for investment, labor with unions 
strong enough to protect itself demanding opportunities for 
employment and increasing wages, and communities striving 
against each other for immigration and the rapid development 
of their local resources, were all carried along by the resistless 
power of the tendency of the times to get around or to over- 
come the effects of this law. Several States which have quickly 
grasped both the opportunity and the necessity have endeavored 
to overcome the restrictive and repressive influence of the law 
by the exercise of their sovereign power, while others have 
supplemented by more drastic acts the Sherman Law. The 
States which have taken the independent course have attracted 
immigration and capital and increased their population in the 
last decade as well as expanded their industries, while the 
commonwealths which have pursued the other course have 



decreased in population because their young men could find no 
employment, and, therefore, were compelled to migrate either 
to Canada for cheap farms or to the industrial States for their 
opportunities. But these progressive commonwealths are find- 
ing their legislation up against the power of the government 
when their products go beyond their borders in interstate com- 
merce. A large measure of the unrest, the lack of employment, 
the halting of business, and the depreciation of securities, are 
due to the uncertainties of this situation. The need of the hour 
is constructive statesmanship which will provide by national 
incorporations opportunity for the free play of capital, the 
largest possible employment of labor and the protection of the 
public under a supervision by a bureau of the general govern- 
ment, which, while preventing abuses, will permit progress. 
President Roosevelt made an admirable move in this direction 
by his congress of Governors, the idea being that through them 
there might be uniform laws throughout the country. It is 
an almost insuperable barrier to our proper and wise develop- 
ment as a nation that what is lawful and encouraged in one 
commonwealth should be penalized in another, that the family, 
that sacred relation upon which everything else rests, should 
under diverse divorce laws be in danger of disruption and 
destruction because a couple may be husband and wife in one 
jurisdiction but the wife a mistress and the children illegitimate 
in another. 

One of the causes of unrest which is so universal is the 
high cost of living. Due in a measure to this is the initiative, 
the referendum and the recall, and many other devices to 
destroy representative government. I met in my experience 
a concrete illustration which seemed to prove that the main 
trouble is not so much the high co^t of living as the cost of 
high living. When I was a boy, sixty odd years ago, I knew 
a successful village storekeeper who opened the store himself 
at seven o'clock in the morning and closed it at night. He had 
one assistant of all work, and he helped in building the fire, 
for there were no furnaces in those days, in filling and trim- 
ming the lamps, for there was no electric light or gas, and a 
single horse, which he groomed himself, hauled the delivery 
wagon and took his family out in the rockaway for a ride 



10 

on Sunday afternoons. He was contented, happy and pros-, 
perous. I stopped in to see his son not long ago. He had 
furnace heat, electric lights, clerks who relieved him of much 
of the work of his father, an automobile at the door, a tele- 
phone on his desk and a typewriter on his lap, and complained 
of the high cost of living. 

One of the most extraordinary of the changes in the 
period we are discussing is our attitude toward the negro. I 
speak of this because of close contact with the question during 
discussions in the Senate on the amendment to the Constitution 
to change the method of electing United States Senators from 
the Legislature to the people. I there found that the sentiment 
which so overwhelmingly placed in the Constitution the 
Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments for the protection of 
the negro had decreased to an almost utter indifference to his 
civil and political rights. The theory under which we permit 
immigrants of every grade of intelligence to become citizens 
after a certain probation is that under our common school 
system, our free education and the influence of our institutions 
they will be worthy of that high privilege. The results have 
justified the theory. We do this also in the belief that it is 
dangerous to have in our midst a large and increasing body 
of aliens who neither enjoy nor can be permitted to enjoy the 
privileges and responsibilities of citizenship. Many States 
in which there is a large negro population have by various 
devices deprived them of the suffrage. Of course this is in 
violation of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the 
Constitution. These States greatly fear that some time the 
question may reach the Supreme Court of the United States 
in such a way that the court may decide against this legisla- 
tion. So when the resolution was offered during the last 
Congress to change the Constitution by simply saying that 
hereafter United States Senators should be elected by the 
people instead of by the Legislatures, these States which 
deny the negroes the right to vote made the demand that 
they would not support the proposition unless the provision of 
the Constitution which has been there for one hundred and 
twenty-five years giving the United States supervisory power 
over the elections should be repealed. A few days ago this 



II 

question came up in the House of Representatives. The reso- 
lution amending the Constitution was reported from the com- 
mittee with this repeal of governmental supervision, and in 
that form it passed the House by the affirmative vote of 
three-fourths of its members. The resolution as it passed the 
House not only changes the method of electing United States 
Senators, but leaves the qualifications of the electors who shall 
vote for them entirely in the discretion of the State Legis- 
latures, which means that no negro will ever be permitted to 
vote in a great many States for a United States Senator, and 
means that the restrictive laws have this buttress for their 
perpetuity if the question comes before the Supreme Court. 
Suppose this action had been taken, I will not say immediately 
after the Civil War, with its heat and passion, but thirty years 
ago. There would have come through Henry Ward Beecher 
from Plymouth pulpit, Dr. Storrs from the Puritan Church, 
and Theodore Parker from the Temple in Boston, an appeal 
which would have aroused the whole country. Every pulpit 
in the Northern States would have rung with denunciations 
of this bargain and surrender. All the great newspapers would 
have joined and mass meetings everywhere would have voiced 
the public indignation, but with the exception of a criticism 
from a few newspapers there is apparently no feeling left on 
the subject in the country. 

Encouraged by this vote, the day after the repeal of this 
century and a quarter old protection for the Government and 
Congress was so overwhelmingly passed as a triumphant rider 
on the proposition for the election of Senators by the people, 
a resolution was offered in the House of Representatives to 
repeal the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. 

This half century is a wonderful inspiration for optimism. 
Let the American boys and girls who have become familiar 
with the rise and fall of empires, and with the startling 
revolutions in Europe during those fifty years, study the 
story of their own country from 1861 to 191 1. It has 
no equal in all that tends to liberty, progress, intelligence 
and the influences which make life worth the living. 
There are some discoveries which are disquieting, but at 
the same time they have their compensations in health and 



12 

the prolongation of life. Fifty years ago we had not dis- 
covered microbes or bacteria. We were peacefully ignorant 
of the battles which are constantly raging in our blood between 
the good and the bad microbes. Myriads of people died with 
peritonitis, not knowing that to cut out the appendix ended 
the trouble. Patent medicines, compounded mainly of whiskey, 
opium or cocaine, were the greatest aids to the doctors and the 
undertakers. While the Pure Food Law compels the makers 
of these stuffs to put their formula on the bottle is declared to 
be an invasion of individual liberty, it has saved millions of 
lives. 

My breakfast for years has been one boiled egg. I found 
recently when I took it out of the shell that it was as lively as 
soda water when the bottle is first opened. It had fermented. 
I felt as did Horace Greeley, who, at a formal dinner, was so 
absorbed in his talk that, not noting what he was eating, he 
got a mouthful of the sorbet which was concocted of Jamaica 
rum. Angry and spluttering, he turned savagely to his hostess 
and shouted, "Madam, I never drink intoxicating liquors, 
and you know it, but if I did I don't want my rum frozen." 
I said to my dealer, "An egg fortifies me for the day, but I 
don't want soda water eggs, for which I am paying you sixty 
cents a dozen." "Well," said the eggman, "those are case 
eggs, but I will send you fresher eggs for seventy cents a 
dozen." Case eggs were cold storage eggs and the best of 
that class. Nearly fifty millions of the worst, which had 
become filthy poisons, were destroyed by the food inspectors 
this year. Yet the cold storage men say, "This is an inter- 
ference with individual liberty." But that law should be 
strengthened. The farmer received for those seventy cent 
eggs only twenty cents a dozen ; fifty cents went to the middle- 
men. If the farmers would form a co-operative trust they 
could divide that fifty cents with the consumers, and thus 
increase their profits and reduce the cost of living. 

As industrial occupations have become hazardous we are 
progressing upon lines of legislation for the mass as against 
the individual by making the individual responsible for death 
or for damages incurred in these employments. We have even 
within the last four years had legislation which makes the 



• 13 

government as an employer responsible in compensatory 
damages for injuries to its employees. If I may mention 
myself in a birthday speech, that is one of my legislative 
monuments. People think right when they are informed. No 
demagogue long survives when the district school year has been 
extended from ninety days to nine months in his community. 
Just now many are rising to notice or distinction by denouncing 
the "Interests." The "Interests" has become almost as effective 
a cry for political purposes as was at one time the railroads 
and at another time corporations. When an analysis is made 
of what the orator is trying to accomplish in this vague denun- 
ciation of the "Interests" it will be found that it is an appeal 
to that universal unrest, strong in every one of us, against the 
fellow who is a little better off than ourselves. 

A statesman in the Legislature at Albany the other day after 
the Assembly had cordially received me disturbed the harmony 
by saying that I did not represent the common people. It was 
a delightful occasion. This did not occur until after I left, 
but there is nothing perfect in this world. There is always a 
flaw in the emerald or a fly in the amber. But yet this state- 
ment may mar his own political future by talking about the 
common people. In our country, where all are equal before 
the law, where there are no classes, no privileges, where ninety- 
nine out of every hundred of the heads of our railroads, our 
banks, our insurance companies, our business enterprises, our 
statesmen, started as poor boys, there are no common people. 
Even Lincoln never used that word, and if any man was a 
tribune of the people he in all our history is their leader. I 
heard General Spinola tell a story of how he ruined his chances 
once for the Assembly by saying in a speech in the Sixth Ward 
that he was glad to get down to that locality. An indignant 
citizen sprang to his feet and yelled, "Low-cality is it? We'll 
show you we are high-cality," and only the policeman saved him 
from the mob. Everybody ought to think for himself, but 
it is not easy to think right. I remember a Senator making 
a speech upon a question where his State was divided and the 
canvass for his re-election was on. As he balanced the pros 
and cons until it became a fair wager how long he would stay 
on the fence and on which side he would land, a witty colleague 



14 

remarked, "That speech reminds me of a farmer who took 
his clock to the maker and said, 'I wish you would mend this 
clock. I do not know what is the matter with it, because when 
it strikes four and the hands point to twelve I know it is half 
past one.' " 

Of the seventy-seven class is Doctor Eliot, President 
Emeritus of Harvard. He celebrated his birthday during this 
month. I read on Sunday his interview in which he gives 
with that wonderful precision and lucidity which has always 
characterized him the rules which make him vigorous at 
seventy-seven and hopeful for the future. Cheerfulness and 
temperance run through his inspiring talk. I think I can 
agree with him when he says, "Go to church. Keep a clean 
heart and a good conscience. Give your mind exercise as well 
as your body — really think. Exercise regularly. Eat in 
moderation. Take a full allowance of sleep. Avoid indul- 
gence in luxury and the habitual use of any drug, not Only of 
alcohol but of tobacco, tea and coffee." If I do not go to 
church on Sunday, I am uncomfortable the whole week, and 
always inspired by the services and the sermon. Eating in 
moderation I have preached at all these dinners, but I never 
have had time for regular exercises. Sleep is the absolute 
necessity for health and longevity. It was said of Napoleon 
that he required only four hours, but one of the innumerable 
biographies from those who were on his staff says that he often 
slept in his saddle. A man at seventy-seven should not attempt 
things which would be easy at forty no matter how vigorous 
he may feel. Matthew Arnold died because at sixty-five he 
took a flying leap over a high fence to shame the boys. 

The most difficult advice to follow given by Doctor Eliot is 
to really think. Most people exercise their minds along the 
lines of their business or profession, but on general subjects let 
the newspapers do the thinking for them. This become a habit 
from which it is almost impossible to break away and real 
thinking becomes too hard a task. A farmer on the western 
reserve of Ohio, sitting with a troubled look on his face, was 
asked by a traveler what was the matter. He said, "My 
Democratic neighbor got the better of me in an argument last 



i5 

night, but wait until the weekly Tribune comes with old 
Greeley's editorial and then I will smash him to bits." 

Passing through Albany at one time I learned that the 
Governor of our State, a very successful man, and whom I 
highly valued as a friend, was ill. I stopped over a train and 
went up to see him. I found him in dressing-gown and 
slippers, surrounded by the hundreds of bills which had been 
left on his hands by the Legislature and which were to be 
signed or sent unsigned to the Secretary of State's office before 
the constitutional limit of days allowed him had expired. He 
said, "Chauncey, here are questions of sociology, of municipal 
government, of the regulation of charities, of reformatories, 
of conservation and a hundred other things, to which I have 
never given attention. You make so many speeches on so 
many questions that you must do a great deal of thinking. I 
wonder if it affects you as it does me?" "Well," I said, 
"Governor, how does it affect you ?" He said, "The same as a 
rough sea, and I am a mighty poor sailor." 

I was talking the other day with a farmer, an old friend, 
and he revealed to me a brand new way of getting around 
these most necessary laws against watering milk, short measure 
in the basket and the barrel and short weight on the scales, 
legislation against which is all of this period that I have been 
discussing. He said, "I let my cows in warm weather stand 
during the middle of the day in water. I find that by the 
processes of absorption they give twenty per cent more milk." 
Of course this method of watering milk is beyond the reach 
of the law or the inspector. 

My friend Choate has said in one of his happy speeches 
that from seventy to eighty are the best days in a long life. 
Having already passed the majority of these years, I am in 
full accord with my friend. Gladstone said that the best and 
happiest period of his life was after sixty, but he was in the 
eighties when he swept the country by a marvelous personal 
canvass and carried his Irish Home Rule Bill, and at eighty- 
five he wrote to that most delightful of English social leaders, 
Lady Dorothy Nevill, "The year hand of the clock of time has 
marked eighty-five and has nearly run its course. I have 
much cause to be thankful, still more to be prospective." It 



i6 

was my privilege to meet Lady Dorothy very often years ago, 
and so I read with the greatest interest her reminiscences which 
have recently been published. In them Lady Dorothy tells this 
charming story about an aunt who, she says, was the homeliest 
woman in Great Britain, so homely that she passed forty with- 
out ever receiving an offer. Wolfe, the explorer, was the lion 
of the London season and sat beside her at dinner. She became 
so excited with his adventures among the lions and elephants 
that she dropped her fork. The explorer unhesitatingly plunged 
under the table to find it in a more adventurous journey than 
he had ever had in Central Africa. When he discovered it 
he pinched her foot. It was the only attention she had ever 
received and she fell madly in love with him. Soon after 
they were married. This reminds me that in reading the life 
of Samuel Rogers, the poet banker, his biography says that 
while his faculties were not impaired otherwise his memory 
was completely gone after ninety. An effort which was made 
by a scientist to rouse that faculty when Rogers was ninety-two 
resulted only in his recalling the name of the girl who had 
rejected his offer of marriage when he was a young man. The 
story of the pinch of the foot and its result and of this only 
recollection of the nonagenarian poet indicates what lives 
when everything else has died. 

I frequently meet with men past sixty who complain that 
their friends and companions are dead and they are unable to 
find new ones to take their places. So they say life is very 
dull and uninteresting. These unfortunate people have not 
found the true secret of happiness at any age. It is to be part 
of each generation, to be a participant in its work and in its 
play, to appreciate its fun and not laugh at its follies, to be an 
elder brother in your church associations, in your political 
organizations, in your club life, in your fraternity, so alert 
and valuable in your activities that you are welcomed by the 
youngest and the experience of venerable years gives a value 
to your advice which commands the attention of all. This 
appreciation and applause is the most healthful of tonics and 
one of the best aids to vigorous longevity. 



SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 

at the Annual Dinner of the University Club, 
Washington, Monday, February 27, 1911. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen : As a university man, 
to-night seems to me something like the gala day in the 
Coliseum at Rome. If you can imagine this room to be the 
Coliseum, and the President of the United States as the Em- 
peror in his box, then Carter and I, and other Senators and 
Members of Congress, who are in the same situation, pass be- 
fore him like the gladiators of old saluting with the cry, 
"Nos morituri te salutamus" — "We who are about to die 
salute you." I only turn the Latin into English because most 
of you have been out of college more than ten years. 

Senator Carter and I are among the number of the elect 
and the saints for whom this is the last week on the political 
planet. On Saturday we expire. The catastrophe suggests 
both sorrow and hilarity — sorrow for what we lose and 
hilarity for what we escape. The angel of political death 
appears in the Senate in these days in sundry disguises. At 
one time he takes the form of the amendment to the Consti- 
tution for the direct election of Senators ; at another the 
resolution relating to the seat of Mr. Lorimer; at another the 
Canadian reciprocity. He remarks on each of these propo- 
sitions to those who are still in the ring, "Whichever way you 
vote you are mine." A committee of farmers representing the 
granges and agricultural societies of the State of New York 
called upon me and said, "If you vote for this Canadian treaty 
you need never expect any political favor which the united 
farmers of the State of New York can prevent your receiving, 
but if you vote against it you have our united support for the 
rest of your life." Then a representative of the newspaper 
publishers came in. Pie said, "If you don't vote for this treaty, 
by editorial denunciation, paragraphical sniping and reper- 
torial misrepresentation, we will make your life a burden and 
retire you to permanent oblivion." "Well," I said, "suppose I 
do vote for it. What will you do then?" The representative 
said, "Then we will never mention you." 



i8 

The Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Representatives 
has a collection of poetry for the use of Members delivering 
memorial addresses on deceased Members. One used the 
other day, I fear, might represent the tears over retiring 
statesmen: "Here lies the body of my dear wife. My scalding 
tears cannot bring her to life. Therefore, I weep." 

How happy was the condition of the representative of 
the people in the good old days. On the questions prevailing 
in that period there were no divisions within the party, no 
questions upon which the Senator or the Member could not 
follow the leader with safety and devotion, while in these 
days party lines are becoming so indistinct that the electorate 
which gives rousing majorities one year for one side gives 
equally rousing majorities the next year for the other side. 
But the university man has a satisfaction which cannot be 
enjoyed by any outside the order. Parties may come and 
parties may go ; the political question of to-day may seem vital 
for the republic, and be forgotten to-morrow ; but as time goes 
on and age mellows, aspiration and enthusiasm for other things 
fade and become nebulous, but the old campus, the old build- 
ings, the old fence,, the old professors, the old associations 
grow fresher, more beautiful, more satisfactory with the years. 

We are happy in having with us here to-night one of the 
men who constitute that enormous aggregation of men called 
"New Yorkers." They come from every state in the Union 
to our city to take their chances where failure is hopeless but 
rewards are great. The one who succeeds in his profession, 
his business, his calling of any kind, in this great town, is pre- 
eminently the survival of the fittest and equivalent to a New 
Yorker by birth. So this young Texan, Martin Littleton, 
coming unknown and unheralded to the metropolis, speedily 
won a rare position in the forefront of a crowded profession, 
and then, turning to politics, reversed the time-honored ma- 
jority in the district in which resides ex-President Roosevelt. 
And yet, before he has taken his seat in the Lower House, he 
confidently announces his candidacy for the Senate. We are 
students of the classics and we love those acts of heroism of 
the ancient times which have been the inspiration of all the 
ages. The three hundred at Thermopylse, Curatius jumping 
into the pit to save his country, Horatius holding the bridge, 



19 

are familiar examples. So, when the Democratic Party, torn 
asunder by faction and threatened with annihilation by internal 
strife, seemed on the eve of destruction, Friend Littleton 
heroically and unselfishly sent word to the leaders in the Legis- 
lature at Albany, "I will make the sacrifice. Take me for 
Senator." Certainly I should feel highly honored to have my 
brilliant voung friend as my successor. 

An incident, both picturesque and interesting, which took 
place a few days ago in this Senatorial contest at Albany 
happily and favorably illustrates the honor of men in public 
life. Muckraking magazines, yellow journals and Chautauqua 
lecturers have been for years preaching to the people that the 
public life of the United States is the most decadent that exists 
anywhere in the world. They have succeeded in producing a 
widespread distrust of the representatives of the people, both 
in State Legislatures and in Congress. It is a distrust so 
deep-seated that I doubt if if. is ever removed. Everyone who 
knows anything about progress in legislation knows the 
enormous improvement which has taken place both in the 
personnel of representatives and in the work which they have 
performed since the Civil War. The lobby which used to fill 
the halls of Congress has now practically disappeared. In the 
New York Legislature the Democrats have a large majority 
on joint ballot. They are responsible for the order of business. 
They placed upon the record a rule that no pairs should be 
recognized unless they were recorded with the clerk. It so 
happened that a week ago when the roll was called in the joint 
Assembly for the election of United States Senator it was 
discovered that there were so many Democratic absentees that 
the Republicans had a clean majority. The majority leader 
claimed that the absentees were paired individually and with- 
out his knowledge and asked that those pairs be recognized. 
He was informed that under his own rule, which had been 
adopted, those pairs were illegal. He admitted that they were 
illegal, but begged the minority to recognize the pairs, which 
were made individually without notice and in violation of the 
rule, as a gentleman's agreement. Here is an interesting 
question of ethics. If a legislator makes a private agreement 
to violate a standing rule of the legislative body to which he 
belongs and for which he voted, is that violation an agreement 



20 

of a gentleman? Though the minority had it absolutely in 
their power to elect a Senator and might have demanded that 
the game should be played according to the rules, they decided 
that, notwithstanding rules and orders, the gentleman's agree- 
ment should be recognized. I do not believe that business men, 
having the legal right, would have yielded under such condi- 
tions. I know that no lawyer responsible for the interests of 
his clients would have permitted his opponent to gain such an 
advantage. And I state this only to show that in public life 
and among public men there is the very highest and most 
sensitive honor. As I have been the candidate of the minority 
and receiving their united votes since the balloting began, I 
would have been the recipient of this remarkable happening, but 
I rejoice exceedingly that my friends did not take the advan- 
tage which was legally in their power. The people had elected 
a Legislature which was Democratic by a large majority, and 
they had the right to expect a Democratic Senator. 

Washington has changed marvelously since I first came 
here twelve years ago. It is filling up with the palaces of the 
men who have made fortunes all over the world in ventures of 
vast magnitude. These palaces are going up in all the great 
cities of the country. Nine-tenths of their owners boast that 
they are self-made men and sneer at the products of the col- 
leges and universities. In an active life of fifty-five years with 
opportunities to meet more people than almost any man alive, 
and know something of their careers, I have come to the con- 
clusion that it is only the few wiho are exceptionally gifted 
who can excel those who have had the benefits of a liberal 
education. No one except those who have been privileged to 
enjoy them can appreciate the infinite pleasures there are in 
the advantages which the old institutions give. I remember 
one wonderful man whose learning was limited to the three 
R's, but who had a world-wide reputation for success, who 
would have given a large part of his vast fortune if he could 
have enjoyed a college training. But I knew another, and I 
can see his shiny, bald head now, who was always speaking 
contemptuously of the men of the schools. One day he said 
to an eminent professor of physiology, "What has all your 
education done for you, sir? See where I am and what I 
have, and I am a self-made man." "Well," said the professor, 



21 

"while you were making yourself why didn't you put some 
hair on your head?" I remember another who angered a 
famous painter with the same remark, and received this retort, 
"I wish you would let me paint on the top of your head the 
picture of a rabbit." "Why a rabbit," said the astonished 
millionaire. "Because," said the artist "somebody might mis- 
take it for a hare." 

Every American boy starts with a quick mind. Afterward 
it is a matter of development. I heard this story the last time 
I was in New Haven. When the British Ambassador was 
delivering his very able addresses to the university he had a 
discussion on the street one day with President Hadley as to 
the brightness of the street boy in London and America. 
President Hadley said, "Let's test it with this newsie." The 
President said, "Boy, can you tell us what time it is by your 
nose?" to which the boy answered, "My nose isn't running this 
morning." 

Nothing impresses me more than the evolution of American 
democracy. We started with very little power in the executive 
and all power in Congress, when all the rest of the world were 
under autocratic governments of the kings, and we were 
afraid of the king. In the development of a century and a 
quarter all the rest of the world, especially England and 
France, have come to the absolute supremacy of the legislative 
branch and the retirement of the executive, while we have 
evoluted the other way. So, at that early period our English 
and Scotch ancestors believed in three and four hour sermons 
in the pulpit and whole-night speeches in Parliament. Now, 
in the condensation on the other side the leading authorities 
of the Church of England propose to condense the Ten Com- 
mandments. They take the longest one which states what 
you shall not covet, and, eliminating everything else, leave 
only "Thou shalt not covet." If this rule could be applied to 
the United States Senate its business would be finished and 
its sessions ended in three months. As it is now, we have 
statesmen whose great ambition is to have their posterity 
point to the Congressional Record and say, "My father filled 
more pages of that wonderful publication than any man of his 
time." It would be an enormous benefit to many a man and 
a tremendous relief to the world if such a one was only gifted 



22 

with the feminine instinct of propriety, an instinct which never 
fails, which is always correct, though in the matter of personal 
adornment very expensive. In the recent excavations which 
have been made on the site of ancient Babylon they have come 
across, in the library of Nebuchadnezzar, where the books were 
stenciled on clay and baked, the Babylonian story of the Garden 
of Eden. And this publication proves, that when man and 
woman first appeared upon earth, she had this instinct of 
propriety for herself as well as for him. This story says that 
after the accident of the apple, when Eve retired and wove a 
dress for him and herself of the leaves in the Garden, that 
Adam put his around his neck and she exclaimed, "Great 
Heaven, Adam, that is not the place to wear it!" 

It has been my privilege to serve under Presidents McKin- 
ley, Roosevelt and Taft. McKinley had spent twenty years in 
Congress and he looked to the Senators and Members exclu- 
sively for guidance, advice and help. Roosevelt had a 
genius for gauging the popular current beyond any of our 
public men. He had invisible wires which reached every part 
of the country and every department of industry, and through 
them he gathered, long in advance, the trend of public opinion, 
and then, with fife and drum, and cymbal and horn, became 
its leader and carried its purposes into effect. In these 
troublous times there is fluidity of parties, and more than ever 
before in the history of the country great corporations and 
great aggregations of wealth on the one side and agitation and 
unrest on the other, are creating most critical and dangerous 
situations. It is a period that calls for patience, for high cour- 
age, for judicial fairness and for those rare and indefinable 
qualities which command the confidence of the people. No- 
where in such a crisis could the combination of culture and 
experience be found equal to the task except in the product of 
our American universities. Happily for the country and 
happily for the people, one of the finest fruits of liberal culture, 
one of the best results of the college, a man who has carried 
the spirit of Alma Mater into every function of life and every 
office that he has held, is our President, William H. Taft. 



WELCOMED HOME BY REPUBLICAN CLUB 



Speech at the Dinner given to Senator Depew by 
the Republican Club of the City of New York, 
April 7, 1911. 

My Friends : When a man enters upon a great office 
he has doubts; when he retires he still has doubts; but if his 
neighbors, among whom he has lived and who have known 
him always, gather to greet, to welcome, to honor and to con- 
gratulate, all doubts are removed. Any one properly consti- 
tuted regards the consummation of a successful life to be 
happiness. Happiness is not an accident nor purely a question 
of temperament and environment, nor can it be secured by 
cultivation. It is a gift, both from within and without; from 
without, in unselfish friendship; from within, in appreciation 
and gratitude. 

There is a vast difference between going out with your 
party or being beaten within your party. For a Republican 
to be stepped on by the elephant is death, but to be kicked 
by the Democratic donkey means only a period in the hospital. 

The saying that ''a prophet is not without honor save in 
his own country" may have been true in earlier days, but is 
not applicable to our times. 

Under our system of government, which, unlike the Eng- 
lish, confines a representative to his home district or state, 
no one can secure and hold public office unless he is held in 
honor in his own country. If strong at home, if holding 
continuously the respect and confidence of his fellow citizens, 
storms of detraction, or hatred, or enmity from other states, 
are powerless to disturb him. 

I have just closed twelve years in the United States 
Senate, very eventful ones in legislation and very happy ones 
to me. When Tennyson sang "Better fifty years of Europe 
than a cycle of Cathay" he did not possess American experi- 
ence. In the fifty years since 1861 we have passed through a 
crisis involving the existence of the country or its whole future 
every decade. The civil war for the preservation of the Union, 



24 

reconstruction for the permanent peace and perpetuity of the 
Union, the defeat of fiat money, the resumption of specie 
payments, the silver craze, the establishment of the gold stand- 
ard and the experiment with colonial government were all 
crises full of peril, full of history and of grave consequences 
to the republic. I have experienced all there was to feel by an 
active participation in each of those troublous periods. 

It has been to me one supreme lesson in the absolute in- 
destructibility of our institutions and liberties. Every citizen 
passes through a period of seeing in the immediate future the 
destruction of his country. But while believing this prophecy, 
if you have seen several times the period set for the cataclysm 
pass by and nothing happen, predictions of evil cease to dis- 
turb your peace of mind. I have a letter of my great-grand- 
father's, written during Jefferson's administration. He was a 
judge and a Federalist. This letter to his son-in-law, a dis- 
tinguished lawyer of the same faith, says : "With Jefferson 
as President, an infidel in religion and a French revolutionist 
in politics, I see, perhaps not in my time, but in yours, the end 
of religion and liberty in these United States." Several gen- 
erations have come and gone since the old gentleman left to 
his children this grewsome legacy. Each generation has found 
the country enjoying larger liberties, greater power and pros- 
perity and opportunities for all undreamed of by their prede- 
cessors. 

There will be crises in the future, occurring probably 
every decade, perils from the clashing of labor and capital, 
perils from the growth of socialistic sentiment, perils of the 
dangers to all property in the effort to control great corpora- 
tions and wealth without checking progress and employment, 
perils from the mob spirit and perils from autocracy. 

England, handicapped, as we protectionists think, by free 
trade, is trying to keep as much as possible of her former 
position as the workshop of the world by encouraging indus- 
trial combinations. This is done to reduce the cost of pro- 
duction. The German states, as in the famous potash case, are 
themselves interested in various industries. They form close 
syndicates with their competitors in the same line of business 
to maintain prices at home and utilize their government-owned 
railroads and subsidized mercantile marine to so lower charges 



25 

for transportation as to command foreign markets. Our legis- 
lation forbids all combinations, the good as well as the bad, 
and our task, as we extend our commerce, is to adjust our 
conditions for competition with other nations. 

We as yet have not fully grasped our position as a world 
power and the duties it imposes, nor have we arrived at a 
settled policy which is demanded by foreign governments 
under the responsibilities assumed in maintaining the Monroe 
doctrine. Judging the future by the past, the pendulum will 
probably swing our way until the common sense of the people 
checks its dangerous progress, and then politicians, with ears 
to the ground catching the changing sentiment, will eagerly 
lead in the opposite direction. So, if we who are here to-night 
are permitted to visit these scenes a hundred years from 
now, we will find conditions bettered, opportunities larger 
and greater marvels brought about by inventions, and the game 
of politics played possibly with the same cards and with similar 
results to those which have characterized our period. Between 
political crises and political stagnation, it is better for the 
public good that the storm should rage and some temporary 
damage be done, for a wreck here and there upon the shore 
is nothing to the life-giving gale which lashes the ocean into 
fury and sends the beneficent rainclouds over the earth and 
clarifies sea and air of impurities. 

In rendering an account of stewardship a catalogue would 
be wearisome, but I rejoice in many things in which I was 
permitted to participate, and for which I had opportunity to 
render such assistance as was in my power. The carrying into 
effect of the gold standard and the establishment upon a firm 
basis of national and individual credit was one of the achieve- 
ments of my period. 

Before the conservation of natural resources had become 
a question of any importance, as chairman of the committee 
having charge of such matters in my earlier years, I became 
convinced of the necessity of turning the Appalachian range 
into a national forest. The eight states through which the 
range runs could do nothing individually. The cutting off 
of the trees led to the washing away of the undergrowth and 
humus which held the rainfall and distributed it beneficially 
through the valleys. The floods which followed the loss of the 



26 

forests destroyed annually twenty million acres of fertile land. 
The tragedy of the destruction of twenty million acres a year, 
with all their possibilities for settlement and happy homesteads, 
was beyond language to describe. I prepared a bill and passed 
it through the Senate. It took ten years of continuous effort 
to get it through the House of Representatives, but in this 
last session, including also the White Mountains, it became 
a law. The inclusion of the White Mountains was due to the 
efforts of Senator Brandegee of Connecticut. 

Reform by legislation is always slow and tedious and re- 
quires continuous and persistent effort to succeed. The gov- 
ernment had never yielded to a law which would make it 
liable to those engaged in its service in dangerous employments 
for similar compensation for death and injury to those which 
were universal in industrial pursuits. For years that bill had 
appeared and annually been buried. President Roosevelt and 
Secretary of War Taft placed it in my hands, and in the last 
hours of the closing session of the Sixty-first Congress I 
succeeded in passing it and sending it to the President. I am 
prouder of that than of many measures of country-wide inter- 
est in whose perfection I participated. 

The Senate is a comparatively small body with a mem- 
bership which runs for six years, and with re-election for 
another six. Associations and intimacies permit a member to 
secure for his state things of importance which a young mem- 
ber can never gain. I was assigned immediately upon enter- 
ing to the great committee on commerce. This committee 
passes upon all measures relating to the rivers and harbors of 
the country and the improvements of the waterways. I be- 
came deeply impressed with the scheme which that eminent 
senator, Senator Frye, had prepared for Ambrose channel. I 
joined with Senator Frye to make this project a success. None 
of us dreamed at that time that mercantile marine engineering 
would produce leviathans of 50.000 tons, and yet with a fore- 
sight which was more of hope than of intelligence, we carried 
to perfection a channel into the docks of the port of New York 
of sufficient width and depth to accommodate and secure for 
our harbor those marvelous carriers of the sea. 

The barge canal comes to the Hudson River twelve miles 
above the improvement which permits the floating of its larger 



27 

craft. Last year near the close of the session the engineers 
and a citizens' committee came to me with the statement that 
unless the government at an expense of between six and seven 
millions of dollars improved that twelve miles the barge canal 
was a failure — it ended nowhere. 

Senators are clamoring for appropriations for every river 
and creek in the country. When most of the states are jealous 
of New York, to secure an appropriation of this kind in the last 
stages of a session or at any other stage is purely a matter of 
personal relations with senators. I pleaded for, and secured, 
the preliminary appropriation from my associates, more than 
upon its merits, on the statement that it was absolutely essen- 
tial for my re-election. There again comes in the personal 
equation, for as a rule brother senators will do much to retain 
among them one of their number. 

In the same way, when every city, village and hamlet in 
the country was howling for public buildings and lifting the 
dome of the capitol with the cry that New York had been 
petted and fed at their expense, I secured the two uptown 
postoffices which are to cost between three and four millions 
each. 

And in the same way and for the same reasons and by 
the same pleas, though the secretary of the navy might cry 
economy and financiers protest, I secured for the Brooklyn 
navy-yard one of the new, mighty dreadnoughts, giving em- 
ployment in that yard to over 4,000 men, supporting 4,000 
families for the next two years. And of the $24,000,000 which 
have been appropriated for the harbors and lake coasts of our 
state during my term, I venture to say that much of it has 
come because of my continuance on the committee through 
which those appropriations must pass. 

During my twelve years we have nearly settled the railway 
question and taken it out of politics by the Roosevelt railway 
rate bill, the Elkins anti-rebate bill, and the Taft railroad bill 
of the last session. I believe that when the results of this 
legislation are worked out from their present crudities, and 
there always will be crudities in the beginning of new admin- 
istrations, that there will come greater benefits to the public 
and more security to railway investors and efficiency of railway 
management. 



28 

Notwithstanding the opposition of our savings banks, 
which I thought unwise, I did my best for the postal savings 
banks law, believing it to be best for the country and that it 
would keep here the $100,000,000 a year now sent abroad by 
our foreign population because they do not trust our banks. 

I have always supported the merchant marine subsidy, 
and regret that it did not become a law and that our people 
are now giving $200,000,000 a year for freight to foreign 
shipping, and that American ships are not the carriers of 
American trade all over the world. American ships with 
American officers would be active agents for the extension of 
our markets while foreigners are necessarily hostile. We are 
the second naval power, and yet the other great naval powers 
look upon us as of little account because in time of war we 
have no mercantile marine for auxiliary cruisers, or colliers 
for our fighting machines and they cannot stay two weeks 
away from shore. 

Owing to abundant experience from annual visits abroad 
for many years, I became convinced that there is a necessity 
for housing our diplomats, as other nations do, in the capitals 
of other countries. I early commenced advocating this, and 
regard it as a happy result for the dignity and prestige of the 
United States that a beginning was made in this Congress by 
an appropriation for this purpose. 

As chairman of the committee on Pacific Islands and 
Porto Rico, there came to me most interesting experiences in 
the efforts to solve the serious problem presented by governing 
the Philippine islands, Hawaii and Porto Rico. Many minds 
have been at work and many men continually laboring to solve 
these problems. It is a source of congratulation that peace 
and prosperity in the Philippine islands and in Hawaii and in 
Porto Rico are demonstrations of the wisdom which has 
created out of no experience of our own a beneficent colonial 
policy for our dependencies. 

It is a tribute to the seat which I have occupied for the 
last twelve years that the Democratic party, with 32 majority 
in the legislature, was unable by its utmost efforts, though 
working day and night for 74 days, to fill it until the Republi- 
can minority gave them help. A seat in the United States 
Senate is worthy of any man's ambition. 



29 

"Why the Senate ?" asked a French critic of Thomas Jef- 
ferson at the time of the French revolution. 

"Because," said the great statesman and author of the 
Declaration of Independence, "it is like the saucer to the tea 
cup ; when the tea is too hot to drink with safety, it can be 
cooled off in the saucer." 

The Senate has been called the Millionaires' Club, and 
yet with its ninety-two members a majority have not a com- 
petence outside of their salary, and not over 10 per cent have 
reached the millionaire mark. Seven senators died recently. 
One started as a poor boy, and in developing the mineral re- 
sources of his own state became a millionaire, but the joint 
assets of the other six did not amount to $200,000, and three 
left practically nothing. This is a fair average of the financial 
condition of the Senate. 

There are several kinds of senators. The most valuable 
are those who seldom appear in the "Record," but work night 
and day in the committee rooms and on the floor in the perfec- 
tion of good measures and in defeating bad ones, and those 
who "Think that day lost whose low descending sun views from 
thy hand no noble action done," the noble action being some 
more or less interesting remarks in the next morning's "Con- 
gressional Record." 

There has been much criticism both at home and abroad 
upon the unlimited debate permitted in the Senate. During 
the sixty-first Congress, which has just closed, there were 
43,921 bills introduced and only 810 became laws. I believe 
in the Jeffersonian doctrine of the least possible legislation, 
and I think that is in accord with the best sentiment of the 
country. Many and many of them died because unlimited 
debate left no time for consideration. 

During my twelve years' experience I know of no meas- 
ure of importance which has failed because the Senate has 
no rules to limit debate, no closure, no previous question. If 
a measure is worthy, means are found before it is lost to 
bring a minority to consent to its passage. After twelve years 
of experience and much study and thought. I believe it would 
be unfortunate to change the custom of the Senate. 

There have been several filibusters in the Senate in my time 
where a small minority endeavored to defeat, by using up the 



30 

time between the commencement of debate and final adjourn- 
ment, already agreed to by both Houses, some measure desired 
by a large majority. Physical exhaustion counts continually 
against a filibuster. But more than that, no man has sensations 
so numb and feelings so dead and sensibilities so far lost as to 
withstand for any lengthened period the ill-concealed anger 
and contempt, and ultimately disgust, of his associates. 

A senator engaged in a filibuster is an interesting mental 
and psychological study. I have rarely heard one who could 
go along for more than two hours without returning to the 
beginning and traversing the same ground, and after doing 
this several times he goes back and over the ground in prac- 
tically the same language, like a cat pursuing its own tail. That 
speech never appears in the "Record" until several weeks after- 
ward, and then is edited to the limit, so the world never gathers 
its inanities, its banalities and its repetitions. 

The Senate stands by its traditions. One hundred years 
ago every man over sixty took snuff. Because of this custom, 
snuffboxes were placed on the Democratic and Whig, and then 
the Democratic and Republican, sides. These snuffboxes are 
still filled every morning. The snuff has been unused for years, 
but not long since some quack started the idea, during a recent 
attack of influenza, that snuff would cure it. If the influenza 
keeps up, the habit may return and with it the old red bandana 
to conceal the enormities of the practice. 

The most confirmed result in my fifty-four years of public 
and semi-public life is a belief in party organization. It has 
its evils, as everything human does, but they can always be 
cured or they cure themselves. I believe that good legislation 
and progressive legislation come from there being in the coun- 
try two great political parties, nearly evenly divided, so evenly 
that the mistakes of one lead to the triumph of the 
other. I tried insurgency early in life and got over it imme- 
diately. It was when I went off with other Republicans in 
support of Greeley. So our friends who so blithely claim that 
insurgency is a brand new invention of their own are practicing 
something which is very, very old. 

An insurgent becomes regular when he and his friends 
secure a majority. The planet Saturn had eight satellites, and 
astronomers tell us that the rings of Saturn are kept in place 



3i 

by the regular and methodical movement of these satellites 
around the planet in one direction. But every once in a while 
astronomers for hundreds of years have noticed a disturbance 
of the rings which they were unable to explain. The enormous 
telescope provided by Mr. Carnegie has penetrated this mys- 
tery. It has found that there is a ninth satellite which moves 
in and out among the others, but in the opposite direction, 
always producing a disturbance and threatening a dangerous 
collision. They cannot find that it contributes anything but 
trouble to the stability of Saturn's place in the heavenly 
universe. 

The astronomers here named this insurgent in the planetary 
system Phoebe. We will always have Phoebes, contrarily 
minded, moving in the opposite direction and colliding with 
the majority, but in the general economy of our political sys- 
tem they sometimes produce a healthy shaking up. 

Another fundamental among political principles which 
experience has confirmed is representative government. There 
is no doubt that an enthusiastic and able propaganda against 
representative government by appealing to the sentiment called 
the people's will has made great progress. There is no doubt 
that it has discredited state legislatures and Congress. It has 
led in many states to the initiative, the referendum and the 
recall. It claims, in its extreme phase, that government can 
only be popular when the actual meeting of the mob takes the 
place of the deliberations of the legislative body and decisions 
of the courts. 

The man who acts as his own lawyer loses his property; 
as his own doctor, loses his life ; as his own architect, lives in 
an unsanitary building; as his own engineer, drives over a 
bridge which falls into the stream. As life grows more intense 
in its demands upon people in every department of work, they 
must concentrate their minds on their industry if they would 
succeed in their chosen pursuit. The people know that with 
these conditions, and with the greatest intelligence among the 
masses, to provide measures of government and principles of 
justice is absolutely impossible. 

They can select men, their neighbors, those who are willing 
to serve and who are able to do this work for them, and then 
judge of the capability and the intelligence of their representa- 



32 

ti,ves, as they do of the work of their engineer and their lawyer 
and their doctor, by results. It is to the credit of our institu- 
tions that while every other country has changed in its funda- 
mentals, we live after one hundred and twenty-five years under 
the same constitution, practically unchanged and with a liberty 
and prosperity and promise for the future which are magnifi- 
cent testimonies to the wisdom of the fathers. 

It was my privilege as secretary of the state of New York 
at the time to be brought in close relations with President 
Lincoln and his cabinet and the leading members of Congress, 
and I have known with more or less intimacy every President 
and nearly every public man of national reputation since. 
I became a senator under McKinley and have served under 
Roosevelt and Taft. McKinley had passed his life in the 
House of Representatives. He had the profoundest rever- 
ence for the legislative branch. He never introduced by mes- 
sage or otherwise any of the great measures of his administra- 
tion without long and frequent consultation with senators and 
congressmen. I was consulted in regard to all of them in their 
preparation and presentation, and afterward in advocating them 
upon the floor, and this was the experience, I think, of most of 
his own party and of the opposition. This gave McKinley a 
hold upon Congress which few, if any, of his predecessors had 
ever possessed. 

I can say that as a senator from his own state I had ex- 
ceptionally pleasant relations with President Roosevelt. 

I believe that one of the most misunderstood of our 
Presidents is President Taft. His life has been judicial and 
never one of political strife, and so he looks upon questions as 
a judge, and not from the viewpoint of a politician as all men 
brought up in political life must. It never occurs to him what 
may be the effect of a measure upon his own political fortunes. 
I believe that as President Taft's measures are better under- 
stood, his unselfish patriotism and devotion to the public service 
better known among the people, that he will grow in popular 
favor, so that when the national Republican convention meets 
in 1912 there will be but one name before it, that of William 
Howard Taft. 

I highly appreciate the presence here to-night of that 
distinguished citizen of our State, the Vice-President of the 



33 

United States. After twenty-two years of most useful serv- 
ice in the House of Representatives, his elevation to the 
second place in our government was a merited promotion. 
I have studied many presiding officers of the Senate. As that 
body has few rules and resents any check, the duties of the 
Chair are difficult and delicate to a degree. But, with his 
large experience, his intimate knowledge of parliamentary 
law and Senate precedents, his wonderful tact and uniform 
good nature, Vice-President James S. Sherman makes one 
of the best, if not the best, presiding officer the Senate ever had. 

And now, my friends, we are all New Yorkers. Next to 
his country, a man's allegiance and pride should be to his state. 
My ancestor got his farm from the Indians before Governor 
Dongan, and those who came after have largely remained by 
the old fireside. The great men who have adorned our his- 
tory from the time of Hamilton and Jay are the inspirations of 
succeeding generations of New York youth. Thurlow Weed, 
who was for thirty years the dominant political factor in the 
political life of our state, was my preceptor in practical politics, 
while William H. Seward, whom I knew intimately and loved 
ardently, was my teacher in political principles. 

Our glorious old commonwealth is foremost of all our 
sister states in all that constitutes a great empire. I have always 
felt, both in the Senate and out, that in working for the state, 
which, with its unequalled harbor, its lake ports, its great 
canal, its mighty metropolis, which is the financial and com- 
mercial center of the United States, I was doing the best serv- 
ice possible for my country. 



SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
at the Dinner given to the Ex-Presidents of the 
Union League Club of New York on Saturday 
Evening, April 8, 1911. 

Mr. President and Fellow Members of the Union 
League Club: This meeting which you give with such a 
large representation of our membership to the ex-Presidents 
of this organization is one of the most interesting events in 
the history of any club. The seven Presidents who have filled 
that high office for thirty-eight years are here not only in 
life but with vigor. The position of chief executive is inspiring, 
keeps the arteries from hardening and prolongs life. 

Our senior, Mr. Choate, happy in his eightieth year, has 
talked to'us to-night with all that brilliancy, versatility, wit, 
humor and eloquence with has endeared him for more than 
half a century to his countrymen. I join with you in con- 
gratulating him upon having preserved the poster which an- 
nounced that the Republicans of the Twentieth Ward of New 
York City would hold a ratification meeting for the election 
to the Presidency of Fremont and Dayton in October, 1856, 
and that the speakers would be Joseph H. Choate, Esquire, 
and others. He had already reached that distinction so eagerly 
sought by all young orators of rising from among others to 
the first place on the program for the night. 

But our friend Choate is not the sole survivor of the 
speakers of the Campaign of 1856, for, in September of that 
year, I was the only speaker at a Republican ratification at 
Simpson's Hall, in the Village of Peekskill. What is the 
Twentieth Ward compared with the Village of Peekskill? 

The quotation of Mr. Choate from "Alice in Wonder- 
land" most felicitously indicates the source of the success in 
life of your ex-Presidents whom you welcome here this even- 
ing. The philosophy of that quotation is that victory or lon- 
gevity is largely a question of skill as a jawsmith. I would 
like to know where in this country there are any citizens who 
have got larger dividends out of the exercise of that member 



36 

of the human anatomy, the jaw, than these ex -Presidents : 
Joseph H. Choate, Horace Porter, Elihu Root and myself. 

For many years I have been deeply interested in the plan 
to care for the ex-Presidents of the United States. While there 
are living seven ex-Presidents of the Union League Club, there 
never has been more than two of the United States. The 
cares of that office are a bar to longevity, and the living ex- 
President speedily expires when a new one appears. We as 
a people do not like to have our ex-Presidents return and 
enter upon the ordinary vocations of life. Mr. Cleveland felt 
that so strongly that he left a large and remunerative prac- 
tice and lived in the quiet of scholastic Princeton. There 
was a certain vexation among the people when Grant entered 
business and when Harrison returned to the practice of law. 
After much thought I had devised a scheme and contributed 
much literature to it for pensioning ex-Presidents. The idea 
had become popular and was generally supported in the press. 
The thought was that the country should have those experi- 
ences which can be secured nowhere except in the Presidency 
by giving to the ex-President a life seat in either House of 
Congress witH a salary sufficient to maintain the dignity of 
the position. But the scheme was killed by President Roose- 
velt. In a notable speech just before he retired from office, 
he called attention to this effort and said in effect that he 
desired to inform his countrymen that he did not wish them 
to make any provision for him by way of pension or other- 
wise, and then remarked with rare emphasis, "This ex-Presi- 
dent can take care of himself." He certainly has demonstrated 
not only to the United States but to the whole world his 
vigorous and successful independence. 

I do not know that the question of what to do with the 
ex-Presidents of the Union League Club has ever been agi- 
tated, but you have happily solved that problem. Dine them 
frequently, dine them well and make them glad at the dinner 
by your enthusiastic and cheering approval of their administra- 
tions. 

I was for seven years President of this club, three years 
longer than anyone who ever held the place. It gave me a 
knowledge of human nature, as exhibited without reserve in 



37 

this family relationship, which has been of incalculable value 
and amusing interest. It is an old saying that eighteen hun- 
dred members of a club pay annual dues in order that they may 
occasionally have a place to dine or to sleep, and one hundred 
of their number enjoy palatial accommodations and comforts 
at the lowest possible cost. It is among these perennials that 
we study human nature — the few who grab all the morning and 
evening papers so that the occasional dropper-in can find none, 
the few who take all the seats in the library and all the tables 
for correspondence and retain possession, the few who regard it 
as an outrage if new members staying in town over night de- 
prive them for an hour or so of their daily accommodations in 
the dining-room, which they think belong to them by pre-emp- 
tion alone. One of the plaints of the House Committee in my 
time was how six members would combine their order and beat 
the club by having an order for two secure a course dinner. 
But, while this is one of the best social clubs in the world, 
its distinction is political. It had its origin in 1863 in the dark- 
est hour of the Civil War. It was organized to help the gov- 
ernment with both money and men. Its members subscribed for 
government securities when the credit of the nation was at the 
lowest ebb, and they recruited regiments at the expense of the 
club. A notable part of the history of New York in the Civil 
War is the regiment of colored men raised and equipped by 
the Union League Club. The prejudice in this city against the 
negro was as great almost as in South Carolina. It was doubt- 
ful if that regiment would be permitted to march down Fifth 
Avenue and Broadway to the trains and steamers which were 
to carry it to the front. The whole country doubted 
whether, with the strong pro-slavery sentiment of that period 
in this city, this regiment would be permitted to leave without 
being attacked and possibly dispersed. But the members of 
this club, who had raised that regiment, many of them well 
advanced in years and known and honored for a generation 
in this community, solved the question by marching at the 
head of the colored regiment as it moved down Broadway. 
Unarmed, as they were, the moral courage of their act awed 
the crowd and instead of abuse and assault they were met 
with cheers. 



38 

This incident recalls to my mind at this moment the march 
of the Seventh Regiment to the front. The government called 
for the National Guard, and the Seventh Regiment of New 
York, at that time the best drilled and equipped in the country, 
immediately responded. Everyone who witnessed their depart- 
ure have carried through life upon the tablets of memory the 
most extraordinary picture of the Civil War. When the novelty 
had worn away and people had become accustomed to the war 
hundreds of regiments from New England and the rural part 
of New York marched down Broadway without exciting much 
interest or attention. But when the Seventh marched the peo- 
ple did not know what war meant. We had had none since 
the Mexican War of 1848, in which few participated and none 
remembered. The attack on Sumter had aroused horror and 
indignation through the North. In New York, with a much 
smaller population then than now, the Seventh Regiment was 
peculiarly representative of its business and professional life. 
The whole country seemed to have come to New York to wit- 
ness its departure. On every sidewalk and up to the roofs 
of the stores and houses and banked in the side streets were 
men and women waiting to give to the boys their greeting and 
farewell. The regiment never looked so well. Its ranks were 
full; none had stayed behind. The roars of the people which 
preceded and followed them came from the full hearts of thou- 
sands who felt that they were parting perhaps forever with 
friends who were risking their lives for their benefit. While 
there was everything to inspire glory in the wild enthusiasm 
of these multitudes, there was a background of the tenderest 
pathos. In carriages and upon temporary platforms, where 
the cross-streets met the Avenue, stood the mothers, sisters, 
wives and sweethearts of the soldiers. There was doubt if the 
regiment would reach Washington without being destroyed 
and greater doubt if its members would ever return alive. 
From carriage window or from platform would be the flutter- 
ing of the handkerchiefs as the loved one came abreast. There 
was no sign from the ranks. It was "eyes front" and perfect 
marching. But as company after company went by, these 
women who had fluttered these handkerchiefs of farewell 
dropped in heaps where they stood as if the Angel of Death had 



39 

already done his dreadful work. I have seen most of the great 
processions of the world, those of the pomp and splendor of in- 
auguration of Presidents and coronation of Kings and Queens, 
those of mourning over mighty dead, those of celebration over 
historic events and those of commemoration of the victories 
of war or the triumphs of peace, but never in my life have I 
witnessed or felt anything so human, so closely in touch with 
everybody, so pathetic, and yet so inspiring, as the march of 
the Seventh Regiment down Broadway for the front in 1861. 

Well, gentlemen, we are not here for reminiscence alone. 
The ambition of this club is always to do what it can for the 
present and provide as far as possible for the future. I regret 
that in a way its political activities have abated in deference to 
its social side. There was a long period when the utterances 
of this club against fiat money, against debasing the currency 
by free silver, in favor of the gold standard, and for right in- 
dustrial principles, were potent in the platforms of political 
conventions, in the speeches of candidates and in the legislation 
of Congresses and Legislatures. Presidents and Governors and 
candidates for legislative offices ardently desired the approval 
of this club. Its power was in the fact that it did not name 
candidates but it was understood that an unworthy candidate 
would not receive its support and might receive its condemna- 
tion. The presidency of this club placed the recipient upon the 
high road to political recognition. 

Of our Presidents, Choate, as Ambassador to Great Brit- 
ain, left a memory which will last through generations, both on 
the diplomatic and social side. Horace Porter was one of the 
best Ambassadors we have ever had in France. John Jay 
performed splendid service for his country as its representative 
at the courts of Berlin and Vienna. Cornelius N. Bliss, while 
Secretary of the Interior, astonished the land-grabber and the 
robber of Indian lands and appropriations by treating them 
as thieves, and carrying into that office the principles of an 
honorable business life which had made him one of the most 
distinguished merchants in New York. Elihu Root, as Secre- 
tary of War, originated and carried into effect the reforms 
which have made our Army an efficient machine, and, as 
Secretary of State, he placed our consular service upon a busi- 



40 

ness basis, with merit as the qualification for places, while, in 
a larger way, by his wonderful visits to the capitals of the 
South American Republics, he did more for Pan-American 
peace and the preservation of the Monroe Doctrine than had 
been accomplished by any statesman in half a century. 

Gentlemen, the work of this club will never be finished. 
New problems are constantly arising almost as important to 
our future, as a people and a nation, as those of the preserva- 
tion of the Union. The perpetuity of the Republic is assured, 
the stability of its currency is established, but, in the future 
as in the past, beneficent principles can be aided by the intelli- 
gence, courage and patriotism of our club. 



SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
at a Masonic Celebration at the Manhattan 
Opera House, New York, on April 13, 1911. 

Brethren : We all have been interested and instructed by 
the eloquence of Brother Wolfe, of Washington. I think I 
ought to reveal a secret, not a Masonic one, but a State secret. 
One of the best officers in our consular service was Brother 
Wolfe while Consul General at Cairo. It was at the time ol 
the famous revolt of the Arabs against British rule, which for 
a time was very threatening. An English official came to the 
Consul General and said, "I think the rebels will capture Cairo, 
and I advise you to leave. If they succeed, their first act will 
be to kill ail the English and Christians." "Well," said Consul 
Wolfe, carelessly flickering the ashes from his cigar, "that 
does not affect me, for I am neither; I am an American and 
a Jew." 

The subject assigned to me, "The Mystic Tie," covers 
the whole field of Freemasonry, but it has a larger sig- 
nificance in the relation of peoples to each other, of capital 
and labor, of employer and employee and in the life of govern- 
ments. It is a far cry back to the building of Solomon's temple 
and to the civilizations which had their rise and fall in the 
thousand years that intervened before the birth of Christ. 
We, as Masons, believe that the first successful effort to prac- 
tically bring about the brotherhood of man occurred during the 
building of that wonderful temple. Solomon had gathered not 
only material but artisans from all the known world. These 
races and nationalities were natural enemies. The only inter- 
national law known was force and might. But Hiram, the 
Master Builder, was more than an architect or a mechanic. He 
was a statesman and a philanthropist. He brought together 
these hostile elements into a society whose only creed was 
the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. For 
three thousand years that sentiment has slowly worked its way 
down the centuries. It has been often checked. For long 
periods it had no life, so far as the relations of nations and 
alien peoples to each other are concerned, but the flame has 
been kept ever burning upon the altars of Masonic Lodges. 



42 

We are to-day suddenly and in a large way brought face 
to face with the problem of universal peace. The message of 
the President of the United States meets with cordial and eager 
response from the King, government and people of Great 
Britain. In every church in England meetings are held to 
promote peace and good-will among men. Carnegie contributes 
a fund which yields five hundred thousand dollars a year to 
give practical impulse to the movement. The advocates of great 
armies and navies, who believe them to be insurance policies for 
the peace of the countries which keep enlarging them, are met 
for the first time with an opposition which is something more 
than theory and sentimentalism. The Hague Tribunal has 
demonstrated the efficiency and effectiveness of arbitration. It 
has peacefully settled international questions which under the 
rule of the ages could have been decided only by the arbitra- 
ment of the sword. Now President Taft suggests to the civ- 
ilized nations of the world, groaning under the burden of main- 
taining their armies and navies and madly rushing toward 
national bankruptcy in the effort to equal or outdo each other 
by increasing the machinery of war, that arbitration may well 
become universal, and armies in the future instead of increas- 
ing can steadily diminish. As fast as this suggestion is ac- 
cepted, so rapidly is extended among the peoples the beneficent 
influence of "The Mystic Tie." 

In July I will celebrate the fiftieth year of my entrance into 
the Masonic fraternity. I think vigor, health and longevity 
have come to me because of its associations. They have given 
to me a half century of unalloyed pleasure, of warm friend- 
ships and of growth in the belief of the beneficent influences 
of our Order. What a wonderful half century from 1861, 
when I became a Mason, until now in 191 1! In all that 
makes life worth the living, in all that adds to material 
prosperity, individual and national, in all that adds to 
the comforts of life and the alleviation of diseases, this 
half century has no parallel. It has given to the world a 
larger liberty in government for the people and by the people 
than any other half century of recorded time. Within this 
half century the petty States of Germany have become united 
in one empire and the German people, in their marvelous in- 
dustrial development, in the expansion of their trade and their 



43 

commerce abroad, in liberties which they never knew before, 
have come to a large share in the blessings of the progress and 
evolution of this half cycle ; so has united Italy; so has Republi- 
can France; so has Great Britain, with a larger and more re- 
sponsive democracy than almost any nation. We have wit- 
nessed the creative processes of liberty penetrating the realm 
of Russian autocracy, and of Persian and Turkish absolutism, 
with something more than the semblance of representative gov- 
ernment. The cables under the ocean bringing the round 
earth in intimate communication as the sun rises in its course 
every day, the leviathans of the deep constantly enlarging the 
sum of exchanges of products which promote peace, comfort 
and prosperity, the telephone, the necessary hand-maiden 
of our daily life, are all the discoveries of our half 
century. The air about us has been forced to yield the electric 
current which is in time to conserve our coal deposits and our 
forests and run our railroads and our industries. It has been 
forced to surrender upon commercial lines life-giving nitrogen 
to add to the productiveness of the soil and of its fruits. Edu- 
cation, at the expense of the State, is brought to the door of 
every child and equal opportunity to the home of every citizen. 
One of the most affecting pictures in the story of Masonry 
occurred at the time of the disbandment of the American Army 
at the close of the Revolutionary War. Washington and 
his officers were Masons. They met as a lodge in his tent upon 
the eve of departure for their various homes, never to gather 
again. We can easily imagine in the exchange of fraternal 
greetings their expression to one another of a new extension of 
"The Mystic Tie." "These thirteen colonies, with their adverse 
interests and many antagonisms, have been brought into a 
unified republic. We transmit to our children a united nation 
founded upon the eternal principles of liberty, to be maintained 
by them forever. We have fought and won for our people a 
principle never before recognized in government and embodied 
in the immortal declaration which has been our inspiration in 
camp and upon battlefield, "All men are created equal, with 
certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness." "The Mystic Tie" framed that im- 
mortal document, the Constitution of the United States, and 
the machinery of the new government commenced its beneficent 



44 

work. The Republic of the United States grew in everything 
which constitutes a great, glorious and free empire for 
seventy-eight years. Fifty years ago yesterday, Fort Sumter 
was fired upon. In all the cabinets of Europe it was the uni- 
versal belief, "This shot breaks 'The Mystic Tie,' and the 
Republic of the United States goes down in blood as many 
another has in the history of the world." The slave-holding 
oligarchy firmly believed, "This shot breaks 'The Mystic Tie' 
that binds our States to the Federal Government." No one 
who witnessed it, can ever forget the shock, the horror, the 
fear and the rage of that day. In the old village of Peekskill 
I, with others who had attended church, were in the happy 
crowds going to our homes. Newsboys suddenly flashed along 
the street with the morning papers from New York shouting, 
"Sumter has been fired upon." Men, women and children 
stopped as if paralyzed and with blanched faces read the news. 
But there was one support for "The Mystic Tie" which the con- 
spirators had not reckoned upon. It was the sentiment for 
"Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever," 
spoken with lofty inspiration by Webster and embodied in 
every school book and spoken for a generation in every decla- 
mation contest and upon every school platform in the land. 
"Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever," 
rang from the farms and through the workshops and from 
the pulpits and penetrated the offices of the lawyers and 
doctors and the counting rooms of the merchants and the 
shops of the manufacturers. In response to that cry millions 
of men left their homes and marched to die if need be for the 
perpetuity through all eternity of "Liberty and Union, one and 
inseparable, now and forever." Slavery died, Lincoln reunited 
the UnMn, the seceded States came into the equal share with 
their victorious brethren of all the inestimable privilege of our 
government. The reunited country has moved forward by 
leaps and bounds to a position among the powers of the world, 
to an expansion of its liberties, to a development of its terri- 
tories, to a union and prosperity of its peoples, never before 
accomplished anywhere or among any peoples in recorded 
time. So, my brethren, both within the lodge for three thou- 
sand years and in our country during its history, we live and 
move and have our being under "The Mystic Tie." 



SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
at the Dinner Given by the Pilgrims Society of 
New York, to MR. JOHN HAYS HAMMOND, 
Special Ambassador to the Coronation of King 
George V, on May 24, 1911. 

Mr. President: In honoring the Special Ambassador to 
Great Britain for the coronation of King George, we Pilgrims 
are performing one of our constitutional functions. The Pil- 
grims Society of New York and the Pilgrims Society of 
London have been among the most efficient agencies in bring- 
ing about an era of perpetual peace, good-will and friendship 
between the old country and the new. We meet to welcome a 
distinguished visitor from the other side, and then, when he 
goes away, we meet again to speed the parting guest. On the 
other hand, we give our benediction, our blessing and our 
good luck to our Ambassador going to his post, and then, 
when he retires or is retired, we greet him with a cordial 
welcome and consolation dinner, so that among the honors, 
which come as a matter of course to an American Ambassador 
going to England, are at least four good dinners and friendly 
functions — from the Pilgrims in New York when he goes, and 
London when he arrives, and London when he leaves, and in 
New York when he returns. 

While Special Ambassadors have been known among 
royalties for centures in the interchange of greetings on 
coronations and funeral ceremonies, I think the first from 
the United States was created by President McKinley, unless 
I might refer to an earlier occasion which was never reported. 
Mr. Emory Storrs, a distinguished but eccentric lawyer of 
Chicago, wanted to be Attorney-General in the Cabinet of 
President Arthur. He was greatly disappointed because he 
failed. His clients raised a fund to send him to Europe, and 
he went to Arthur and said that he would like to go with 
some distinction ; so Arthur, who appreciated Storrs perfectly, 
had a commission made out on parchment, signed by himself 
and attested by the Secretary of State, with the great seal 



46 

attached, empowering Mr. Storrs as a Special Commissioner 

to look into the trouble about the importation of cattle into 
Great Britain from the United States. Our minister at that 
time was James Russell Lowell. Lowell was furious, saying 
that he was attending to that matter much better than could 
this presumptuous Chicago lawyer. Storrs was a passenger 
on the same ship with me. He showed me his credentials 
every day, with signature and stamp and the seal, and finally 
I said to him: "Storrs, what do you expect to accomplish?" 
"Well, of course," he said, "I have no intention of bothering 
about cattle. Our legation is amply competent to look after 
that. What I am after is to compel old Lowell who, I under- 
stand, shows few, if any, courtesies to Americans, to give me 
a dinner and request me to select the guests." Lowell told 
me afterward that to keep the peace with the brute and pre- 
vent trouble at Washington he granted this request, expecting 
that Storrs would want him to invite the Queen and the whole 
royal family. He was delighted when the Chicago lawyer 
selected Tyndall, Huxley, Tennyson and world-wide celebrities 
in literature, science and art. I believe the cattle question, 
while not burning very luridly, is still a spark, but, happily, 
its extinguishment will not be among the duties of our friend, 
Mr. Hammond. 

It so happened that Mr. Storrs was also a fellow-pas- 
senger on our return voyage. I said : "Tell me all about that 
dinner." "Well," said Mr. Storrs, "I stood one day in ab- 
sorbed attention before that marvelous Madonna by Raphael, 
in the Dresden Gallery. It seemed to me that a divine inspira- 
tion had guided the brush of the artist. Suddenly I was con- 
scious that the gaze of the crowded room, all Americans, was 
concentrated on me instead of the picture. I turned on the 
people and said: "Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, you are 
in the presence of the world's wonder, which to see is an event 
in life, and yet you drop this masterpiece for me. I never 
have attracted attention by my personal appearance in our 
own country. What is the matter? Is it my clothes? They 
were made in Chicago." "No," said a fine-looking man who 
acted as spokesman for the party, "y° u are of more interest to 
us than all the old masters, because you made old Lowell 
give you a dinner." 



47 

The Special Ambassador, during the ceremonies, is the 
whole show. The regular Ambassador is not in it. As a 
result, the regular Ambassador has never yet, however he 
may have acted outwardly, accepted with cordiality the pres- 
ence of this functionary who precedes himself. Well, then, 
the question arises, and has always arisen, "What is the Special 
Ambassador to do?" Precisely the same as the special repre- 
sentatives from the other great powers. He is the President 
of the United States. Everywhere, at all places, he is received 
as the President of the United States. In other words he is 
Taft, and I am sure, as we all are, that our genial, companion- 
able and attractive President has happily chosen in making our 
friend Hammond on this distinguished occasion his personal 
representative. 

As a traveler for many years, I have had impressed upon 
me the difference between an Ambassador and a Minister 
Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary. By a rule, four 
hundred years old, the Ambassador can stand covered, if he 
chooses to do that, in the presence of the King. In any event, 
he stands as an equal among the royalties, while a Minister 
Plenipotentiary in England goes in after a Duke and ahead 
of an Earl. This was our condition until the period of John 
Hay. The British Government, by all sorts of ruses and sub- 
terfuges, did their best to give some distinction to our Min- 
ister, but they never could induce the Ambassadors of other 
countries to let him in among the elect or to allow him to 
march in with them. 

One time, when I was in Paris, the Minister of Foreign 
Affairs, whom I had met in America at the time I delivered 
the oration at the unveiling of Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty in 
New York Harbor, sent a special messenger asking me to 
have the American Minister present me to him officially at 
the Foreign Office. The Minister and I went down and had 
to wait an hour after we arrived before we were admitted, 
though the hour had been named. On making an inquiry, 
we found that an Ambassador had arrived a few minutes 
after we did, but, in deference to his rank, he had to be ad- 
mitted first. I inquired, "From what country is this Am- 
bassador?" The answer was, "Hayti." With that experience 
I became a missionary for the creation of embassies, and I 



48 

think the narration of this incident had something to do with 
the final success of the movement. 

While a Senator, I had a conference with the then Presi- 
dent. The object of the consultation was to secure the reten- 
tion of certain gentlemen in the diplomatic service and the 
appointment of others. The President said: "I am going to 
change nearly the whole diplomatic corps. While we never 
can do without this service so long as other countries have it, 
I regard the position as an honorary one to decorate citizens 
who deserve distinction. England can give titles, knight- 
hoods and decorations, France has the Legion of Honor, and 
other countries have various orders which become hereditary 
privileges, while we have nothing of the kind. Now critical 
matters are always conducted by cable directly through the 
foreign office and the Secretary of State and, therefore, I think 
that when a man has been ambassador for four years, or cer- 
tainly six, he ought to yield and allow the decoration to be 
pinned onto the coat of some other worthy and deserving citi- 
zen. The honor lasts for his life. It gives him the precedence 
at all dinners in his own country, and is part of the record of 
his family to endless generations, so I propose to remove many 
of my most intimate friends, believing that I do them no harm, 
while I confer honor and distinction upon others whom I 
think eminently worthy." I do not entirely agree with the 
President in this view, because I have known many instances, 
in fact, they occur frequently, where the acquaintances formed 
by the ambassador with the ruling powers of the country to 
which he is accredited, and where the fact that he is on the 
spot often removes frictions which might grow into serious 
matters, and often removes prejudices and misunderstandings 
before they have reached the dignity of a controversy, which 
would call into play the activities of the ruler and the foreign 
office, on the one hand, and the President and the Secretary of 
State and possibly Congress, on the other. 

Our friend will greet the King upon his coronation with a 
special message from the President at a more auspicious 
moment than has ever occurred before in the relations of our 
two countries, when a King was crowned or a President was 
inaugurated, because he arrives at the happy time when the 
perpetual settlment of disputes by arbitration, suggested by 



49 

President Taft and cordially seconded by King George, is re- 
ceiving unprecedented welcome and approval from the Par- 
liament and the people of Great Britain, and from the people 
of the United States, and only awaits the action of Congress to 
perfect its beneficent results. 

It is with more than an expression of personal regard and 
good wishes that we bid Ambassador Hammond farewell. 
The occasion rises far above an individual compliment. It 
is because we, as Americans, recognize in his mission, and in 
the reception which it will receive in Great Britain, an added 
impetus to the movement so happily inaugurated by. President 
Taft for an eternity of peace, friendship and the reciprocal 
benefits of amicable relations between Great Britain and the 
United States. 



ADDRESS OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
at the Luncheon of the Society of the Cincinnati 
and Their Guests from Other State Societies, 
Metropolitan Club, New York, May 10, 1911. 

Comrades: One of the most interesting of the com- 
memorations of our Order of the Society of the Cincinnati is 
the celebration of its organization. On his birthday we have 
a formal, and more or less imposing, ceremonial for the 
founder of the Society, George Washington, but this occasion 
is always informal and the addresses particularly so. 

I was reconstructing in my own mind on my way to this 
luncheon the scenery and conditions of the period when the 
Society was born, May ioth, 1783. The Continental Army and 
some of their French allies were encamped at Newburgh-on- 
the-Hudson. The war was over, and they were waiting for 
New York to be evacuated by the British troops in order that 
the victorious host of the Republic might make a formal entry, 
be disbanded, and return to their homes after seven years of 
glorious war. There is no more picturesque or beautiful spot 
in the world than the Highlands of the Hudson, and especially 
at this time of the year. Peace having arrived, these veterans 
of the patriot army were enjoying a rest after their long and 
arduous campaign and the terrible sufferings from want and 
privation which they had endured. Just below them was 
West Point suggesting a story still fresh in the minds of all 
how their struggle might have been a disastrous failure if 
Benedict Arnold's conspiracy at that place had been success- 
ful. The communion of the officers must have been full of 
reminiscences of gallant comrades who had died, of fields fought 
over again, of the chivalric French without whose assistance 
they might never have won. In the midst of such surround- 
ings an inspiration came to the Commander-in-Chief, the one 
man upon whom devolved the greatest responsibilities of hi* 
age and the greatest trials of his time, but who with infallible 
judgment never made a mistake, and always, with his happy 
combination of genius, tact and sense, did the right thing at 
the right time. Of course, then as now, organizations were 



52 

created about the festive board. They knew no luncheons 
then. Dinner was always at or soon after noontime, and the 
evening meal was an informal affair called supper. That was 
the universal habit of the people of the United States during 
the first century of our existence. That dinner in Washing- 
ton's tent was a suggestion, after all the hardships of these 
veteran soldiers, of the future prosperity of the country which 
they had created. The Hudson River was teeming with fish, 
and especially rich in that best of them all, the shad. How dif- 
ferent is our experience now with this most delicious of the 
members of the finny tribe. As she returns from the sea to 
her spawning beds she is met in the lower bay with the sludge 
from the factories of the Standard Oil Company. Avoiding 
that as best she can, her next draught of what should be pure 
water is the sewage of the State of New Jersey, through the 
Passaic River, emptying into our harbor. As she seeks to 
escape in order to return to the place of her birth, she is 
assailed on every side with the outpourings of the refuse of 
this great city, of its sister on the other side and of the 
innumerable factories along the banks. Contrast this fish with 
the ones that were served on that memorable day in Washing- 
ton's tent. It was my good fortune, as a Hudson River boy, 
to eat such shad in my early days. When the river was pure, 
when the water had the natural food of the fish, and when it 
was brought alive from the nets to the table, then the shad was 
a feast for the Gods. 

But the Ramapo Hills and the hills about Newburgh were 
at that time full of game, and our forefathers were keen and 
successful sportsmen. There were no game laws, for none 
were needed, and game was not, as it is, unhappily, in our 
day, in danger of extermination by the pot hunter, the ignor- 
ant legislator passing foolish laws and officers enforcing them 
in a way to bring them into contempt and ridicule. 

The cellars of the old colonial families were still full of 
the choicest vintages of the old world, and they were drawn 
upon freely and sent by General Schuyler and his associates 
to the Commander-in-Chief. 

In these surroundings the Chief said to his compatriots, 
"Let us form a society which will stand forever for the prin- 



53 

ciples and the preservation of our new Republic." Then was 
drafted, with that marvelous compactness and lucidity which 
characterized all formal papers of Alexander Hamilton, the 
constitution which has just been read to us, and to that con- 
stitution, commencing with the signature of George Washing- 
ton, there followed the officers of the Continental Army and 
the officers of their French allies. According to the habit 
of that period the membership was made hereditary. 

1 once heard one of the ablest of British statesmen and 
most eloquent of speakers, Lord Rosebery, say in his charming 
way that if the American colonies had not rebelled, and 
remained loyal to the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain, 
their growth and prosperity would probably have been the 
same if not greater. The overwhelming influence of these 
most populous, wealthy and powerful of the semi-independent 
colonies of the empire would have drawn Buckingham Palace 
to New York, Windsor Castle to the Hudson and the Parlia- 
ment Houses to Central Park. Of course, all this was in a spirit 
of friendly humor and banter ; nevertheless, it suggests a preg- 
nant thought. The movement of populations to new territories 
in order that they may better their conditions, either in the 
enjoyment of civil and religious liberty or materially, is gov- 
erned more by sentiment than by interest. Australia has an 
area a little greater than the United States. It has a soil and 
climate eminently fitted to sustain a large population. For sixty 
years it has had the same opportunities in government, in all 
essential liberties and in attractiveness as our own country, and 
yet, while our population has grown to one hundred million, 
Australasia has only about eight million, less than the single 
State of New York. Canada on our northern border has an 
area in square miles about the same as our own. Two-thirds 
of it at least is capable of profitable development in agriculture, 
forestry and mining. Its existence as a colony, with every 
independent power of self-government, except a sentimental 
attachment as a member of the British Empire and the English 
Crown, is coincident in years with that of the Republic of the 
United States, and yet the population of Canada, with all the 
power of Great Britain to assist, is less again than that of the 
single State of New York. 



54 

It is most interesting" that the great migrations of the last 
century, of which such a large number came from the British 
Isles, have steadily flowed into the United States and could not 
be diverted to either Australasia or to Canada. If the govern- 
ments of these colonies had been narrow or restricted or 
illiberal, the question could be easily answered, but every 
liberty, freedom of conscience, civil rights, liberty of locomo- 
tion, free press, universal suffrage, are common to all these 
governments. In the United States, however, the citizen is 
not a subject. He is a sovereign. Within his sphere he is 
a king, and, united to make a majority, he becomes the sov- 
ereign power in the land. It is this sentiment of becoming an 
independent citizen of a country with an independent govern- 
ment which has created out of our wilderness great common- 
wealths, which has spread populations over our plains and 
mountains and valleys while these enormous colonies of the 
mother country remain so largely still in primeval conditions. 

It was about the time of the organization of the Society 
of the Cincinnati when the army, in arrears of pay 
for three years, angered at the Continental Congress by its 
neglect, presented a petition to Washington stating in effect 
that a new representative government never would be strong 
enough to live, and their safety and that of their children was 
in a powerful executive like a king ; if he only would take this 
place, they had the power to put and keep him there and the 
country would be safe. Washington rejected their proposal 
with more temper than he had ever displayed, and, at the same 
time, read them a lesson, which they never forgot, upon the 
value of the liberty for which they had fought. It may have 
been that this contemplated revolt suggested to Washington 
the formation of this society as one of the bonds of union. 
The keynote, the central thought of its Constitution as 
approved by him, was loyalty to the Union of the States and 
the preservation of the National Government. 

A few months afterwards Washington bid farewell to his 
officers at Fraunce's Tavern in New York and departed for his 
home at Mount Vernon. The officers, returning to the thirteen 
States to which they belonged, carried with them the charters 
of the State societies as thev exist to-dav. As we read of 



55 

the dangers of the young Republic, of the Articles of Con- 
feredation which proved a rope of sand, of the difficulties in 
the Constitutional Convention to form a national instrument 
which would be acceptable to all, of the opposition to its rati- 
fication which was successful for more than a year, and of the 
perils of the new government until Washington had placed it 
upon a firm foundation during his two terms as President, we 
can appreciate the value of this Society in cementing the 
Union of the States. Wireless telegraphy has come to us 
within the last decade, but wireless telepathy is as old as 
human intelligence. The officers of the Continental Army 
were the leading spirits in their several communities. Every 
one of them was actuated with the spirit of Washington. 
Mails were irregular and communication difficult in that early 
period, but each knew, as opposition to the Union, or to the 
adoption of the Constitution, or to the administration of Wash- 
ington, showed itself in his neighborhood what Washington 
expected him to do, and, though his sword was sheathed, as 
a citizen he performed that duty as loyally as he would have 
done under the eye of his great commander upon the field of 
battle. 

Washington seems to us to have been the most industrious 
man who ever lived. His estates, his business, his hospitality 
were enough work for anyone, but he kept up a correspond- 
ence, all written by his own hand, with his officers, with dis- 
tinguished civilians and with eminent men in foreign lands. 
The Constitutional Convention could never have agreed except 
for his commanding influence and the support which he received 
from the constituencies of its members among the officers of the 
Army of the Revolution all over the country. It could never 
have been ratified by the States except that in every State Con- 
vention were these veterans carrying out the wishes, voicing 
the sentiments and loyally following the lead of their great 
chief. It is a delightful and at the same time a most respon- 
sible heritage that has come to us, the descendants of the 
officers who formed the Society of the Cincinnati. Each 
period has its crises and its perils the same as during the 
administration of Washington. They differ in degree and 
intensity, and yet each of them require for their proper solu- 



56 

tion the best intelligence, the highest patriotism and the most 
devoted loyalty of the citizen. To the members of the Society 
of the Cincinnati this duty is one specially imposed and gladly 
accepted. As we celebrate the organization of the Society, 
the birthday of Washington, its founder, and on the Fourth 
of July the Declaration of Independence, we study again the 
story of the founder, we read anew the life of the Republic 
and we renew afresh the obligations transmitted to us by our 
ancestors, and which we assumed when we signed our con- 
stitution. 



From Leslie's Weekly, May iS, igu. 

Senator Depew Tells the Wonderful Secret of 

Success. 

How a Rich Father Made His Son Work Up from the 
Bottom of the Ladder Unassisted 

By Arthur Wallace Dunn. 

EDITOR'S NOTE: — The year 191 1 marks the fiftieth anniversary 
of Senator Depew's initial appearance in the public forum. During 
this time the Senator has been in intimate contact with public affairs. 
His picturesque figure is better known than that of almost any other 
in public life. Recently the Montauk Club of Brooklyn celebrated its 
twenty-first anniversary and the seventy-seventh anniversary of Senator 
Depew's birth. Over two hundred and sixty members gathered to 
honor the retired Senator, thus completing the twentieth birthday party 
which the club has tendered Mr. Depew. It was at this gathering, 
over which William H. English presided, that Senator Depew remarked : 
"This half century is a wonderful inspiration for optimism. It has no 
equal in all that tends to liberty, progress, intelligence and the influences 
which make life worth the living." 

No man appeared in either house during the last session 
of the Sixty-first Congress who seemed to be more perfectly 
satisfied with his surroundings than Senator Chauncey M. 
Depew of New York. It was known, as soon as the results 
of the election of November 8th, 1910, were announced, that 
Senator Depew would not be re-elected to the Senate, because 
the Legislature of his State had gone Democratic. He was 
one of many prominent men who went to Washington to spend 
the last months they would ever have in public life. Many 
were dejected, cast down and gloomy. But Senator Depew 
was just as cheerful as before. His countenance was as beam- 
ing, his smile as pleasant, his greeting as hearty and his laugh 
as mirthful as in the days when he was still on the top wave 
of political and personal prosperity and success. 

It was after observing him in his best mood that I made 
comment upon the way he accepted political reverses. The 
conversation became general, and in reply to a question, de- 
signed to bring out the views of Senator Depew, he discussed 
several matters and mentioned many things which even those 
who know him best either never knew or have forgotten. I 
then asked the Senator to put in a condensed form the main 



58 

features under discussion, and the result is the following 
interesting story: 

Your inquiry, "How, in retiring from active public serv- 
ice when within a few months of seventy-seven years of age, 
do you look upon the past?" is difficult to answer. Every 
public man has critics and admirers, the one thinking his career 
a failure, the other a success far beyond its merits. The ques- 
tion seems to me to be, "Has one's life been useful and happy?" 
If useful without being happy, there have been mightly few 
dividends worth having. If happy without being useful, then 
a man's days have been frivolous and not worth considering. 

I remember as if it were yesterday when my father, who 
was well-to-do and carrying on a prosperous business, said, 
"Now you have your profession as a lawyer, you have a small 
but good working library and your shingle is nailed on the 
door, you will never get another dollar from me except through 
my last will and testament." I could have got along easier 
after being thus thrown out of the second-story window if I 
had not been coddled before, but to be deprived of all income 
was a trying situation. Several times, when in great stress 
and debts, I went to my father and stated the conditions, and, 
while the tears would roll down his cheeks, he maintained a 
Spartan consistency in action. I thought very hard of him 
during those years, but have blessed him ever since, because 
this drastic method was essential to independence, though it 
might have been tempered with a little mercy. 

Well, I commenced practicing law in a village of twenty- 
five hundred inhabitants, with an over-crowded bar of able and 
experienced lawyers and very little means in the community to 
support such a disproportionate number of legal talents. I 
knew no one outside of the village and had no means of enter- 
ing upon the larger avenues which came to classmates who had 
formed valuable connections in large cities. Fifty-three years 
have passed since then. Whatever I am and have are due to 
my own exertions. I do not recall that I have been helped by 
anybody. 

In the law, I early made up my mind that financial success 
and reputation were to be found more in corporation service 
than in general practice, and from the attorneyship of one of 
the smallest roads in the countrv — one hundred and twenty- 



59 



eight miles— I became general counsel of one of the largest 
railway systems in the United States and in the world. In 
business there came to me the presidency of this system, with 
all which that meant of powerful associations. Twice in my 
life by indorsing notes— which has been my characteristic 
weakness— for friends, in order to help them without any 
expectation of any reward, I have lost all I had and been 
plunged into debt. Happily, however, a persistent, insistent 
and consistent cultivation of optimism inspired renewed efforts 
to overcome the disaster. 

My mother was a devout Calvinist and I owe much to her 
continued teaching after every misfortune that all the ills of 
life are really blessings in the disciplinarian plan of the Lord 
for the ultimate best interests of the sufferer and in preparation 
for greater opportunities and larger fortune. I have found the 
doctrine always correct. One instance: Forty years ago 1 
had by purchase a one-sixth interest in one of the most success- 
ful business enterprises in the world dependent upon the 
validity of a patent. At the urgent solicitation of friends who 
thought the investment worthless, I gave it up. The interest 
with the accumulations are worth to-day over one hundred 
millions of dollars. One man who had a similar experience, 
when his interest had become equal to about two millions, com- 
mitted suicide because he had lost such a phenomenal fortune. 
On the contrary, I am most thankful for my loss, because I 
know that this luck would have led to absence of effort and 
loss of health from an indulgence in luxuries which unlimited 
money can buy that would have planted me in the old grave- 
yard at Peekskill years ago. A dead multi-millionaire is of 
no use to himself or anybody else, while it is a glorious thing 
to have the continuing possession of health and happiness. 

Yale in my day was a hotbed of politics. The slavery 
question between 1852, when I entered, and 1856, when I 
graduated, was breaking up old parties both in and out of the 
universities. Breaking away from my family and old friends 
and associates, I started on a stumping tour, immediately after 
my graduation in 1856, for Fremont and free soil. That ap- 
pearance on the platform has been uninterrupted and persistent 
in all parts of the country for fifty-four years. This activity 
on the platform carried me for two terms to the Legislature 



6o 

of the State of New York, fifty years ago. Then, as a candi- 
date for secretary of state, the Democratic majority which had 
elected Governor Seymour the year before was reversed. 

The Legislature being Republican and Seymour a Demo- 
crat, tiie Legislature assigned to the secretary of state the col- 
lection of the soldiers' votes. There were about four hundred 
thousand voters from New York in the field, and the difficulty 
of securing from Stanton, then Secretary of War, their loca- 
tion, so that the necessary papers could be sent and the votes 
secured, kept me in Washington for more than three months. 
But the character of the mission brought me in intimate con- 
tact with President Lincoln and in close association with all 
the members of his Cabinet. This experience for a young 
man, or for any man, was invaluable and is one of the choicest 
recollections of a lifetime. It could, be expanded into a volume. 
One lesson is impressed on me, and that is, in the long 
run before the people, no man permanently triumphs in an 
effort to fool them. I have met Cabinet ministers, Senators 
and members of Congress who were afraid to have their con- 
stituents know that they were acquainted with a railroad presi- 
dent, while privately they were seeking every favor it was 
possible for them to secure. During all my career I have taken 
the ground that one-fifth of the voters of the United States 
were interested, from a wage-earning standpoint, in the rail- 
ways of the country and that they were entitled to as much 
consideration, were as good citizens and would make as good 
officers as the people engaged in any other pursuit. Certainly, 
as I have found them, they are not nearly so selfish and not 
nearly so wedded to personal interests as the majority of both 
Houses, who, though engaged in many pursuits, yet have their 
living in the tariff. 

Facts are the most complete answer to loose charges and 
assertions. Notwithstanding all the rot published about the 
interests, and association with and working for the interests, 
which has been the common stock of many newspapers and 
magazines, I am proud of the record that I supported, by 
vote and voice, every administration measure of Presidents 
McKinley, Roosevelt and Taft. Certainly no representative of 
the people and member of the Republican party could do more. 
So, while general counsel of the New York Central Railroad, 



6i 

I was offered the United States senatorship, hands down, in 
1884, and declined. I was offered every position in Harrison's 
Cabinet, in 1888, except Secretary of State, and subsequently 
Secretary of State, and declined. While president of the New 
York Central Railroad, I received the entire vote of the State 
of New York through several ballots in the national convention 
for President and enough more to run the vote up to ninety- 
nine, and when I withdrew it would have been nearly three 
hundred on the next ballot, with a fair prospect of success. 
But I withdrew on the earnest petition of Western Republicans, 
because of the intense anti-railroad feeling in their several 
States. While still holding this position in the railway serv- 
ice, I was elected United States Senator. 

Now, let us see. Two terms in the Legislature, secretary 
of state of New York, appointed but resigned the mission to 
Japan, offered and declined the ambassadorship to Germany, 
offered and declined three appointments in the Cabinet, 
offered and declined once United States senatorship and elected 
twice, and then retiring not because of defeat in the Legisla- 
ture, but because a Democratic landslide had carried both the 
State and Legislature, make the results of life on the political 
side very satisfactory. Thirty years' service as Regent of the 
University of the State of New York, elected by the Legis- 
lature, and twelve years a member of the Governing Body of 
Yale University, elected by the Alumni, gave wide, varied and 
most interesting experiences among educators and hundreds of 
thousands who owed their careers to the schools. As general 
counsel of a railway system I retained lawyers in many states 
and was brought into intimate relations with two generations of 
leaders of the Bar, and as a railway president with all the 
captains of industry. This close touch with these masterful 
men has been most instructive in revealing the mainsprings 
in our railway, industrial, commercial and financial develop- 
ment, which has been so marvelous, especially in the last 
third of the century. A large, interesting and entertaining 
field seems to open to a veteran of these experiences when, 
after he has rounded out his seventy-seventh year, he enters 
upon the performance of such duties as a citizen as may fall 
to his lot, especially when he is in possession of abounding 



62 

health. Freed from cares and large responsibilities, loving 
life on all its varied sides, there ought to be, Providence per- 
mitting, happier years than ever before in the work and play 
of wise old age. 



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